Category: The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 1

Finally, I’m out of here and on to our next mission.

By now I was standing up and glaring at Cat. He was right, my treatment at the hands of the Neanderthals must have left me a bit confused.

You see Cat was Cat, in that that is what his name was. However he wasn’t the original Cat. His Father was and his Father had indeed eaten copious quantities of molten lava beans with unfortunate gaseous build up consequences. Cat, well Cat Junior to be more precise, did not fortunately share his parent’s liking for beans. However, he did, despite my best efforts, exhibit most of his Father’s other extremely irritating characteristics. You see Cat Junior, unlike his Father had not come to me as a fully grown robot. He’d come as a kitten, with his Father’s DNA, but not fully programmed behaviourally. I had therefore the opportunity to influence him as he grew. I had tried very hard to make him understand that he was with me to serve me. To fetch me things like food and drink and to run errands for me. However, despite promising early results, ultimately he had become just as big a supercilious know-all ashis Father had been, with an ego hard to fit into the vast expanse of the Galaxy.

So basically, ever since he’d reached a year old, I’m not quite sure why it was when he reached that age, he’d started to order me around just like Cat Senior. All of a sudden, once more, I was constantly heading off to do alleged tax investigations only to encounter totally unexpected and usually seriously dangerous circumstances. And Cat Junior always knew more about these missions than I did!!

Once more, as usual, his superior vision of himself led him to start ordering me about and he said,

“Right. Let’s stop messing about here. We’re needed. HQ have a mission for us. We must be off.”

I thought about arguing and asserting my position over the little rubberised monster but, given my recent circumstances and where I was, I thought better of it, simply saying,

So go we did, heading for the hovercar Cat had arrived in. As I strapped myself into the seat next to Cat I started to daydream of all the vile and unsociable things I would do to him once we were home. We’d start with a very long extra-high frequency sonic wash in the kitchen cleaner. Cat Senior used to really hate that. As a smile played across my lips at the thought, my daydream were interrupted by Cat, who said,

“Just in case you’re making plans of what to do to me once we get home, you should know we’re not going home. Our latest mission is on Earth and our orders are to go straight there.”

“Oh,” I said as I started to wonder once again if he could read my mind. Cat Senior had always talked about developing that capability. I then added in a somewhat exasperated tone,

“So where is ‘there’ then?”

“London Central,” responded Cat before adding, “near the Old Thames Bridge to be precise, .”

“Marvellous,” I said, “no space travel involved. Excellent. Ok I guess we’d better get going then if HQ says it’s urgent. But don’t think I’m forgetting what happened back at that station. When this job is over you and I are gonna have a long talk about roles and who’s the boss in this partnership.”

“Of course boss. Anything you say,” said Cat purringly, as he pressed a virtual button and we accelerated off into the night sky.

Cat to the Rescue?

Another familiar voice then cut through the air with the words,

“Yes, leave him alone. Abusing him is my job.”

It was Cat, hovering above me, whiskers glinting in the bright light of the room I now saw I was in. Strangely, the grunts of the Neanderthals became totally understandable English and I heard one say,

“Certainly Mr. Cat, Sir. Lads, leave him be. If Mr. Cat is prepared to vouch for him then I think we can assume he didn’t intentionally attack WPASO Candy.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” I exploded. “I didn’t touch her. Well, not much anyway. When the lights went out she screamed, obviously I know now she stabbed herself with her stylus, and then I fell on her. All very easily explained and could happen to anyone.”

At this Cat just muttered, “You moron.”

I continued angrily as I started to sit up and said to the collected ‘Neanderthals’, “ And anyway, is this how you treat all your suspects? Is this how you treat high profile visitors to your station?

One of the Neanderthals responded, “We knew you were Mr. Cat’s assistant but without him here to vouch for you we had to be assume you were just another suspect. I mean, after WPASO Candy screamed and we found her unconscious and bleeding, what would you be think?”

I didn’t care now about the abuse. I was apoplectic at being referred to as Cat’s assistant!! What had the little ‘rat’ been saying about me in his little ‘presentations’ that he’d been giving? I now had a pretty good idea. I turned towards the little monster and shouted,

“Good grief, I thought your Father Cat was bad enough. But you are unbelievable. Does anyone on Earth understand that I am the superior and you are the minion. That I am the monkey and not the organ grinder?”

I drew breath to rant some more but before I could Carry interjected with,

“I think you need to revisit that last sentence. Not entirely sure that’s what you meant to say Chief.”

“It’s too late to ‘Chief’ me now you cat shaped bag of scrap Eesets. They were really taking the urine when they made you. But I’m gonna teach you to respect the organ grinder in this partnership. No molten lava beans for 3 months!!” I exclaimed.”NO,” I quickly added, “let’s make that 6 months!!”

“I think you are getting a little confused Chief. My Father, Cat, he was the molten lava bean junky. I’m much more into fizzy krepits if you recall?”

Oh Help!!

I was beginning to feel most uncomfortable and tried to say so but was told to shut up and shoved even harder, which caused me to swing in an even wider arc. I could feel wetness on my face and realised I’d peed myself. A weak bladder, especially at moments of stress had always been a problem for me, ever since I’d been chased by the Wolfcat that had lived in the sky house next to my parents place.

As more pee trickled down one side of my face, I tried to reflect positively on my situation. What had I learned that I could take away from all this once the Neanderthals had finished with me, assuming of course I was still breathing. Well one thing was of course never to accept any hovercar parts from strangers. And a second thing was never to pee whilst hanging upside down. With those two very positive actions for the future in my mind I started to sob and plead as I managed to discern, in between the grunting coming from the Neanderthals around me, phrases that connected words like terminals and attach, with genitals. Though I have to say their word for genitals had fewer letters than genitals.

Before my sobbing could really take hold of my body, WPASO Candy appeared out of nowhere and smacked hard into the side of my body. Of course I didn’t know it was her at the time. Only after her weight, combined with mine, had caused the cable attaching my ankles to the hook in the ceiling to snap, did I realise it was her. As she lay on top of my disheveled and aching body she cried loudly,

“No, no, he didn’t touch me. I stabbed myself with my stylus when the lights went out. Leave him alone, he’s an Inspector you know.”

A lot of grunting ensued, not from me I hasten to add, as WPASO Candy finished her brief statement on my behalf. Then, as she clambered off me she said,

Now I’m in It…….

As I awoke from my unconscious state, I realised quickly that ‘reflection’ as a process had clearly not been part of the PASO’s core training. I could not move my arms. I wasn’t sure but it felt like they were locked together behind my back. I tried to lift my head but could do little more than move my chin marginally towards my throat. I quickly realised that this was basically because I was hanging upside down. This was not the first time I’d woken up in a somewhat uncomfortable vertical position. On Jurassic Earth, when I almost single-handedly defeated the Mud Lizards’ dastardly plot to steal a Zygote Crystal, they had done something similar to me. So I kind of knew what it felt like.

I relaxed my neck and let my head slowly fall back to its full upside down vertical position. My relatively long hair dangled down and touched the floor, sweeping the hard concrete surface gently as I swung slowly like the smaller boughs of a tree in a gentle Autumn breeze. So, this was different then. The Mud Lizards had secured me firmly upside down to a post set in the ground. Here, at SKYSTATION 9572/Delta, which was where I presumed I still was, I dangled freely so to speak.

Without warning there was a significant weight against my back, followed by a hard push to the middle of my body that set me swinging back and forth. As a consequence my gentle movement across the floor became much more pronounced and I turned into a human broom, as my hair started to vigorously sweep the floor. As some giddiness started to consume me, worse followed as my body was shoved first in one direction and then another. With the successive shoves, which I quickly realised were the result of different Neanderthal boots connecting with my body in turn, I started to spin. My hair transformed from a sweeping broom to a kind of spinning brush. My, was this floor getting cleaned. Very ‘heady’giddiness really started to preoccupy my mind, replacing the thoughts of ‘why me’? that had been foremost in my head, before the swinging had started to intensify.

I really couldn’t believe how my day had deteriorated. One minute I was relaxing and drinking coffee. Then there was a gentle, easy engagement with my hovercar hobby and from that, a sometimes delightful meeting with a vision of uniformed loveliness in the fine shape of WPASO Candy. Finally though, and one might almost say inevitably, here I was, suffering physical abuse at the hands, or was it paws, of apparent ‘extras’ off the set of Planet of the Apes Reborn (again).

Candy’s Colleagues to the Rescue

This, of course, had all happened in the space of very few seconds. As my upper body settled on the twin mounds of Helen’s chest, the lights came back on and several large PASO’s crammed in through what had now become an open door.

I looked up and down to take in my situation. Laying beneath me was an apparently unconscious WPASO Candy. Her blouse was ripped from the neckline to just below the shoulder, exposing the soft pale brown skin of her upper chest. As if that wasn’t enough, there was blood.

At the time I had no idea where the blood was coming from and really had no time to work it out there and then. This was because WPASO Candy’s male colleagues reacted to the apparent plight of their fellow officer exactly how you might expect a group of Neanderthals to react. They ‘did’ first and grunted later.

Within moments of the door opening, I had been dragged to my feet by an ‘octopus’ of PASO’s, grabbed rather uncomfortably in my basement department and raised up vertically at a rapid speed until my head crashed into the ceiling. At this point, I lost consciousness.

Naturally, one would imagine that the police operatives involved here would, after the initial and perhaps understandable tsunami of adrenaline, and other unusual hormones they undoubtedly possessed, would step back and consider the likelihood that I would assault a WPASO in their own interview room.

Cat steals my thunder as usual…..

That made me sit up very straight. Mr. Cat indeed. That blasted tin can robot. I couldn’t even get arrested without him piping up in the interrogation. I couldn’t believe it. So not only had he been giving speeches on his pet and pointless research topic, but he’d seen fit to wax lyrical whilst doing so about my missions. And, from the sound of it, he was taking an incredible amount of credit for my achievements. Wait till I got him home and in the sonic washer-dryer. He’d learn the meaning of the word clean after a few runs through the cycle reserved for stainless Rubanite utensils!!

I leaned forward in my chair some more, with my best cheesy smile playing out across my face, intending to probe Helen and find out more about Mr. Cat’s recent speaking engagement. Repeating slowly the full unexpurgated facts of his tales, whilst watching him tumbling around through the sonic washer’s door appealed to me. However, just as I reached that point of familiarity where I felt that touching Helen’s forearm, in a kind of ‘brotherly’ manner was a good next step, the second ‘thing’ happened. And this second ‘thing’ was a lot worse, ultimately, than the dismay I felt at having Mr. Cat’s contributions to my successes thrown at me.

At the very moment that my hand touched Helen’s body, the lights in the room went out. As they went out she screamed very loudly and I sensed her start to fall sideways from her seated position. I grabbed at the top of her shirt but could do nothing, as I felt her body slump away from her chair and the thin cloth of her shirt tear in my hand under the weight of her. As she fell away and hit the floor, with a bit of a thump, I stood up in a panic and tried to move around the table in the blackness to reach her. All I managed to do though was catch my foot on one of the table legs and stumble down to the floor as well. My landing was, however, softer than my brain initially expected, landing, as I did, sprawled over Helen’s soft and warm body.

WPASO Candy added, with a giggle, that the investigating officer who had written the report was quite new and junior. This really didn’t help to alter my sense of incredulity at the apparent manner in which law enforcement could be swayed by perceptions of social status and position. Not that I necessarily thought this was a bad thing right at this moment. Accordingly, I persuaded myself to continue to be polite and smiley as, after all, I seemed to be benefiting from their prejudices.

Showing me part of the written report seemed to break the ice a bit with Ms. Candy who seemed to be increasingly in awe of what she’d heard about me.

“So,” she said, “it must be so exciting and dangerous to travel the Universe tracking down tax fraud and dealing with Mud Lizards.”

“Well you know, it has its moments,” I responded.

“But you must be quite scared at times. I mean everyone knows what the Mud Lizards’ can be like and you’ve defeated their dastardly plots more than once. All I ever get to do is issue tickets for hovering offences. I never get anything exciting. Or dangerous. I don’t even normally get to interview any suspects. That’s why I was so thrilled to get the opportunity to talk to you about this crime. Even though I knew you must be innocent. Please tell me, how do you manage to cope with the kind of dangers you’ve faced on your intergalactic missions?”

I was positively starting to enjoy my interview with the ‘vision of be loveliness’ that was WPASO Candy. I relaxed in quite a rush, leaned back in my chair and said,

“Well my dear, after the first few times, you know, you just get used to it. You think of your planet first and your personal safety a very distant second.”

I found myself leaning forward as I continued to verbally preen and strut my intergalactic tax inspector stuff. Things were going really well and then two things happened to rather spoil the moment.

First off, Ms. Candy or rather Helen, as I had just started to call her after she had told me more about herself, including her name, said,

“But it must be so much easier and helpful to you on these missions to have Mr. Cat leading the way. I mean, everyone at the station knows his immense contribution to what you do as a team since his speech here on ‘Nothingness’ earlier this year.”